Existential Dramaturgy
If everyone was true to themselves
If everyone lived like an open book
Displaying at will the emotions they carry
Enunciating at will about that which troubles them
Appreciating openly about that which appeals to them
Disapproving openly about that which repels them
Pray, what would it have made of this world?
A better one?
Where living would have been fair, just, and warm
Or a hellish one?
Where everyone would have been wary of their peers
Spitting at their faces
Each time they would dare to paint their inner cosmos
As graffiti on walls?
Why, if everyone was true to themselves
And hid not
In closets, skeletons, old and rotting
If everyone displayed at will
And expected me to be same
Why, would I have been a bloomed rose
Meant to be plucked and to be admired
Would I have been a blushing doll
Too scared to lift up my eyes to glance at the world
As it probes me
Would I have been a much coveted fruit
Meant to be savored and enjoyed for my taste
Would I have been a soothing melody
Setting everyone at ease with my calming effects?
Pray, I trust I would have been such
If I did dare to be true to myself
But, cowardly and inhibited
I choose, rather, to hide behind an image
To pretend that which is in me
Is not
To act as if I care not
To smile when I wish to swirl like a tornado
To be gentle when I am raging with a fiery fire
To be a stone when I am imbibed with human emotions!
But this world itself is not as it seems
This world itself pretends to be what it is not
This world itself revolves upon uncertainty and confusion
So, living as one of its offspring
I am to be true to her own essence!
Tornado -- Catalin Ilinca
Konrad Ackermann hired famed 18th-century playwright/critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing to serve as the world's 1st "dramatic judge" (dramatischer Richter) to analyze theatrical productions in progress for the Hamburgische Entreprise, the 1st national theater in Germany. Lessing used this experience to write the "Hamburgische Dramaturgie," in which he coined the term "dramaturgy" (from the Greek "to write a drama"). Dramaturgy is both the study of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. A dramaturg adapts a story so that it may be successfully acted. Gustav Freytag synthesized the work of Lessing and others; translated into English in the late 19th century as ""The Technique of the Drama," his book became the blueprint for the early Hollywood screenwriting manuals. Erving Goffman used the term in his 1959 book "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" to argue that the elements of human social interactions are dependent upon time, place, and audience; when social actors are successful, their "audience" will view them in the way they desire. Existentialism as a philosophy that derives its value from the freedom and authenticity of an individual's actions, feelings, and thoughts. The attitude was pioneered in the 19th century by Søren Kierkegaard, who borrowed the term from the Norwegian poet Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven. However, it was Jean-Paul Sartre, after World War II, who adopted the term as a distinct philosophical approach. While a prisoner of war in 1940-1941 he read "Sein und Zeit" (Being and time) by the pro-Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger. After his release he helped found the Socialisme et Liberté ("Socialism and Liberty") resistance group, but it soon dissolved, and he turned to writing. Though Paris was still under German occupation his "L'Être et le néant: Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique" (Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology), influenced by Heidegger, was not censored. Sartre asserted that the individual's existence is prior to the individual's essence ("existence precedes essence") and sought to demonstrate the existence of free will. He summarized his work in "L'existentialisme est un humanisme" (Existentialism is a Humanism) in 1946, in which he proclaimed, "man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world -— and defines himself afterwards."
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